Saturday, September 12, 2009

A Crowd

Estimating crowd size is difficult. There are several ways to estimate crowd size, but they're all inexact at best. Every rookie cop learns this fact when he's writing reports. You roll up on the scene of a bar fight and you see people in the parking lot. How big was the lot, how big was the crowd? You can go back and measure the parking lot later, but how big was the crowd of people? Were there a dozen? Fifty? A hundred? Lots of time, it's guess-timation.

There will be disagreement about how big the crowd was that showed up for the Washington D.C. Tea Party today, but some are estimating two million. Two million. That's a lot of folks to be hanging around the Capitol.

Via Glenn Reynolds, we post a picture taken by Mary Katherine Ham from the Newseum balcony in DC.

Fox News is saying tens of thousands, but neither AP nor Fox is showing pictures of the crowds. Their shots are close-in shots of protest signs, not panoramic shots like I've posted above.

MSNBC calls the crowd "thousands" with a penchant for understatement that makes me wonder how they sustain any credibility at all. They aren't a news agency any more; they're a political propaganda organ, much like Pravda was during the Cold War.

About Me

I'm a grandpaw who has lived a life of adventure, and resent having to slow down. I've been a Tank Commander, a Company Commander, an MP. My main career has been law enforcement, with 30 years and counting. At this stage of my life, the most important people in my life call me PawPaw. You've come to PawPaw's House. Sit back and enjoy.
Email me at ddezendorf at yahoo dot com (all spambots must die)